Surgeons: At the Edge of Life

Maxillofacial surgeons Tim and Sat prepare for a marathon operation on 53-year-old Teresa who has a cancerous tumour in her face and will die in a matter of weeks unless it is removed.

74-year-old Jasmine has a vast tumour in her abdomen weighing more than 3 stone. It is consuming her, displacing organs including her stomach and liver. Unless it can be removed she has just 4 weeks to live.

The series concludes by following clinical trials being held at the hospital. Surgeons implant a microphone into a patient's head. A woman receives a liver that would not normally be transplanted.

The series also features pioneering surgery at Birmingham Children's Hospital, including an extraordinary 12-hour operation to create a functioning connection from a three-year-old girl's heart to her lungs, for the first time in her life. Few surgical teams in the world have as much experience in her rare condition as BCH.

At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, England, around 700 operations are carried out every week, across 42 specialist theatres. Most patients have conditions that are familiar to experienced surgeons, but occasionally the teams must tackle much rarer and more challenging cases.

This episode explores how surgeons within England's National Health Service endeavour to meet the needs of patients who require surgery to improve their very poor quality of life. The challenge is balancing the risk posed by highly invasive procedures, against the potential long-term benefit of treating incapacitating conditions which have left their patients housebound and in need of care.